A new report from Global Financial Integrity (GF), “Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2000-2009,” includes data on Tunisia, which GFI estimates is losing more than a billion U.S. dollars per year to illicit financial activities and official government corruption.

Report co-author and GFI Economist Karly Curcio has just published a piece on the blog of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development offering an advance look at part of the report, which is not due to be released until Tuesday, January 18, 2011.  In the blog, Ms. Curcio notes:

"If parts of the economy are growing and developing, why has persistent unemployment and a strong government hand driven Tunisians to violent protests?

"Political unrest is perpetuated, in part, by corrupt and criminal activity in the country. Global Financial Integrity estimates that the amount of illegal money lost from Tunisia due to corruption, bribery, kickbacks, trade mispricing, and criminal activity between 2000 and 2008 was, on average, over one billion U.S. dollars per year: specifically US$1.16 billion per annum.

"With a population of approximately 10.6 million that means almost $110 are lost per person per year in the unrecorded transfers of illegal capital. This is money, desperately needed by the people, that is siphoned off by the wealthy and political elite annually..."

The full blog post is available here.